One Thousand Gifts - Vacation and End of Summer

1596  Family trusting us with their son, my nephew, for a week of vacation
1597  The taste of salt
1598  A beach to go with the humidity
1599  A complete night's sleep
1600  Running and screeching from little ones as the waves roll in
1601  A breeze
1602  Discoveries
1603  Little hands
1604  Nephew saying something was wrong with the crabs because they were walking sideways
1605  Entertaining dinner conversation from the cousins
1606  L and J driving on the beach
1607  Watching the pelicans fly just off shore
1608  My teenage son holding my hand walking from the boardwalk to the van
1609  Watching the lightning bolts striking just beyond the Sound
1610  Family to help guide our boys
1611 Transportation down the coast
1612  Photographs
1613  Being well enough to sleep
1614  Ice cream truck stopping RIGHT in front of the beach house
1615  History and learning new things - the person who took the famous photo of Orville and Wilbur Wright's first flight was a surfman at the life saving station we visited.
1616  A less stressful start to the school year
1617  90% of summer bucket list complete
1618  Everyone pitching in to have the house ready to be shown
1619  Both boys having friends to do something with on a Friday evening
1620 Hubby's help with beginning of the year craziness
1621  Perspective
1622  God's hand
1623  Watching the sailboats framed by the trees at the lake

One Thousand Gifts - From Summer

Still counting my blessings - updating from summer (at least until vacation) and pressing on to reach a goal of 2000 by my birthday next April.

1571.  Stretching

1572  Air pop popcorn

1573  Cold creek water

1574  Christmas cards

1575  Summer bucket list

1576  Beautiful color in the front and back flower beds

1577  Relying on God

1578  Time to read a book

1579  Help in the kitchen fro a five year old

1580  Sunday School parties

1581  Hubby's leadership

1582  Safe return from Scout Camp

1583  Much cooler temperatures

1584  Blog posts

1585  New book

1586  Sunday afternoon

1587  Amazing life

1588  Love is amazing

1589  Visiting with old friends

1590  Visiting with new friends

1591  I will take this humidity any day!

1592  Cabos and fireworks

1593  The floor wasn't as bad as we thought

1594  Fun finds - old reading group t-shirt

1595  Very fun 4th of July with family and friends

One Thousand Gifts - It's Been A While

A while? It's been a year!!  I've written some in my journal, but I was shocked to see that I hadn't posted them on my blog in a whole year!  I'm not even sure if Ann Voskamp links them on Monday's at A Holy Experience or not.

I've decided I'll list everything from when I stopped through the end of the school year in one post here, I'll put everything from summer in another post and then I'll be able to start anew.

1541.  Oklahoma skies
1542.  A walk with Hubby
1543.  No bake cookies
1544.  Aunt being with us
1545.  Improvement
1546.  Similarities
1547.  Goodwill
1548.  Sleeping til I wake up
1549.  A Romo jersey for six years
1550.  God is still patiently teaching me
1551. Teaching on margin
1552.  Learning to use digital Bibles
1553.  Birthday Love
1554.  A clean classroom
1555.  Supportive Words
1556.  Lunch, walk, and other time with MIL
1557. Amazing answers to prayer
1558.  The "envelope system"
1559.  Meeting new people
1560.  Room for growth
1561.  Indian fry bread
1562.  Needed refreshment
1563.  A evening with a child
1564.  New columbine
1565.  New mulch
1566.  Nephew's remembrance (Aunt Winna - baseball tournament to benefit cancer research)
1567.  Finding what M needed - suit for cotillion at a good price
1568.  Looking forward to something
1569  New framed photos
1570  Fun of an online jewelry party

A New Chapter for Dad's House

Almost two and a half years ago, I ended a blog post with this " I am very happy to have this done though. There are some odds n ends left in the house, but it’s mainly cleaned out (but not clean!)."  It was in reference to cleaning out my parents' house. (You can read the whole post here.)

Now we're doing the odds n ends and the cleaning!  Really cleaning.  Hubby (with some M & L help) has taken out two closets and part of a wall, pulled up part of a floor and replaced it, made a water line to the fridge, moved the hot water tank out of the bathroom and moved the washer and dryer from the kitchen to its' new spot. 

We have a new dumpster, but not as big as the first.  All that demolition is going in - in with all the things we saved before and now aren't quite sure why.  After I left yesterday to pick up M., Hubby and L pulled up all the carpet and threw it away.

What's left? Well, Hubby would know better than I - he's good at this!  Replace some windows, take some furniture to an antique store if any family doesn't want it, sell the deep freeze, maybe move a doorway, replace the front door, fix some more floor, add in a kitchen cabinet, majorly clean, clean the cabinets and paint them inside and out (my job), have the fireplace checked, put in carpeting and linoleum, and anything else that needs done!

This project is perhaps physically and financially harder, but not quite as emotionally difficult as the first.  The hardest parts - picking the coins up in Dad's room and knowing they were ones dropped out of his jeans pockets behind his bed and cleaning out all the scraps of papers in Dad's spice rack.  The rack had absolutely no spices, but it was a good holder for all those papers written in Dad's handwriting - the four of us and Aunt's birthdays, our phone numbers and Dr's numbers, a recipe or two - and a few business cards from people who had fixed things for Dad.

It does make me wonder why we didn't do this for Mom and Dad ten years ago.  Dad probably wouldn't have let us!